Johannesburg, 05 Oct 2007
Siemens Medical Solutions Diagnostics is offering a portfolio of solutions that assist in the diagnosis, monitoring and management of disease.
It recently added to this portfolio with the launch of the DCA Vantage Analyzer, a point-of-care (POC) diabetes patient management platform providing glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), Microalbumin/Creatinine and Albumin-to-Creatinine tests for diabetes management.
The company says the platform allows for easy monitoring of a patient's glycemic control and encourages patient compliance by delivering actionable test results during a patient visit.
According to Siemens, the system's data management facility boosts productivity by providing speedy access to patient data such as on-board printed reports and HbA1c patient trending graphs.
The system is network-ready and test results can be shared within the office, clinic or among coordinated POC sites, as well as downloaded to an external healthcare IT system.
It says the ease and speed of access to patient information allows doctors and healthcare workers to have productive discussions with patients, allowing them to positively impact everything from patient compliance to a treatment regimen.
The system also claims to allow for early detection of kidney disease, a high risk among diabetes sufferers. The onboard Glomerular filtration rate calculator assists in kidney disease staging.
Patient ID can be entered via touch-screen or bar code, and the intuitive colour touch-screen display.
Once the test cartridge, which includes the patient sample, has been loaded, the system automatically performs the test procedure. It also stores the patient results and displays, prints and/or uploads patient results.
Other features include the ability to adjust correlation parameters in order to match reference assays, or standardise results over multiple systems.
The platform's performance has been tested and documented in over 100 clinical articles and has already been launched in Europe.
In the US, the product is pending FDA clearance and is not yet available for in vitro diagnostic use. The product is already available in Europe and, according to Siemens, will be available in SA from March 2008.
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